Posted on 04/10/2004 8:54:11 PM PDT by aculeus
this whole story smells....that guy made it all up because he accidently "lost" his records to the Kerry campaign and now he wants a way to cover it up.....
Or the Demons did it without his knowledge....
Stupid fellow .....
Why Kerry can be a serious canidate for the Presidency while having been a member of a terrorist group is beyond me....
Anyone with half a brain would know the Democrats needed to "collect" this document.
BTW, I managed to get ahold of a copy of Nicosia's book on the antiwar movement, which I'll be going through to identify who his political allies might be. Nicosia has already admitted he's pro-Kerry, detailing his specific political connections might help highlight his vested interest. Here's his bio, with some highlights bolded:
Born November 18, 1949, in Berwyn, Illinois, just outside Chicago, Gerald Nicosia received a B.A. (1971) and an M.A. (1973) in English and American Literature, with Highest Distinction in English, from the University of Illinois in Chicago. In the late 1970's, Mr. Nicosia traveled the United States and Canada, interviewing over 300 people who knew Jack Kerouac. His biography of Kerouac, Memory Babe (Grove Press, 1983), earned the Distinguished Young Writer Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters while still a work-in-progress in 1978. Upon publication, it garnered over 200 reviews worldwide, and has generally been recognized as the definitive book on Kerouac’s life and work. It has been translated into French, Spanish, and Czech, and is currently in print in a revised U.S. edition from the University of California Press.
Nicosia has been a freelance journalist, interviewer, and literary critic for the past twenty years, contributing to hundreds of publications, including the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, the American Book Review, the Review of Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and the New York Quarterly.
Nicosia has taught creative writing and journalism at the University of Illinois and the University of California, Los Angeles, and he has lectured and conducted workshops at dozens of other colleges and universities, including New York University, Northwestern University, Columbia College in Chicago, the New College of California, Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington, and Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He has been a featured speaker at Beat and Kerouac conferences worldwide, including the Naropa Institute’s 25-year-anniversary celebration of On the Road in Boulder, Colorado, in 1982, the Beat Weekend at Plymouth Arts Centre in England, June, 1987, the Rencontre Internationale Jack Kerouac in Quebec City in October,1987, and the dedication of the Kerouac Commemorative in Lowell, Massachusetts, in June, 1988
Nicosia scripted and narrated the acclaimed public television documentary film West Coast: Beat and Beyond, which was directed by Chris Felver; he was an advisor to John Antonelli’s documentary film Kerouac; and he wrote a three-act play called Jack in Ghost-Town, about Kerouac’s decline and death, which was produced by the American Blues Theater in Chicago.
Nicosia is also well-known for his own poetry and fiction, much of which has been published in literary magazines. He frequently reads this material in public. He published a collection of his poetry, Lunatics, Lovers, Poets, Vets & Bargirls with Host Publications in Austin, Texas, in 1991, and has a new collection called Love, California Style forthcoming in 2001 from Buchenroth Publishing. He is also the author of a nonfiction novel about the tragic suicide of his friend Richard Raff, called Bughouse Blues.
For the past fifteen years, Nicosia has worked with Vietnam veterans, studying, documenting, and aiding in their recovery from the war. Having interviewed over 600 veterans and doctors, he completed a massive book called Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement, which will be published by Crown/Random House in 2001. It is expected to be the definitive work on Vietnam Veteran healing and readjustment from the late 1960’s to the present, and has been praised by the likes of Senators John Kerry and Alan Cranston, author Maxine Hong Kingston, and National Book Award winners Gloria Emerson and Larry Heinemann.
Nicosia is arranging to donate his thousands of hours of tapes and voluminous files on Vietnam veterans to the Center for Vietnam Studies at Texas Tech University. His research materials will be designated the Vietnam Veteran Peace Archive, providing the only comprehensive resource in the world for the study of Vietnam Veteran healing.
A close friend of Kerouac’s daughter for nearly 20 years, Nicosia was appointed by Jan Kerouac to be her literary executor. After Jan’s death in 1996, Nicosia attempted to carry out her intention of placing Jack Kerouac’s archive of papers and manuscripts intact in a library for public study, rather than having pieces of it sold off to collectors and dealers, as is currently being done. Opposed by Jan’s heir, her ex-husband John Lash, as well as the Sampas family of Lowell, Mr. Nicosia was prevented from ever bringing this critical case to court in order to get a legal ruling on what rights Jan may have had.
Nicosia is currently working on a book about the case of death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal and the death penalty in America.
Thursday, April 19 Reception by Senator John Kerry Area 6:00 to 8:00 P.M. Hart Senate Office Building – 216 2nd St. and Constitution Ave. NE Washington, D.C.
Your insight into his character is corroborated by this:
The 12th annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! festival promises everything you'd expect from an event honoring the town's most famous native son. But in between the beat poetry and the jazz, festival organizers have found themselves presiding over an unanticipated sideshow: a power struggle between Kerouac scholars and family members.
The story boils down to a bitter fight between two men: Gerald Nicosia, a Kerouac biographer and the literary executor for Kerouac's late daughter, Jan; and John Sampas, brother to Kerouac's third wife, Stella, and executor of Jack Kerouac's estate. For years, the two have been wrestling in and out of court for control of Jack's letters, journals, and personal items -- valued at around $10 million.
The situation is as ugly as it is complex. Nicosia has accused Sampas of selling Kerouac's belongings for profit. The other side has shot back with allegations that Nicosia manipulated Kerouac's sickly daughter for personal gain. Nicosia has charged Sampas with making death threats against him. Now, amid the bickering and litigation, Nicosia has taken aim at the Lowell celebration, claiming he has been unfairly banned from taking part.
"John Sampas calls the shots and he doesn't want me there," says Nicosia, noting that Sampas is a sponsor of the festival. "Mr. Sampas takes the position that no one can speak on Kerouac without his permission." Festival organizers, Nicosia claims, are intimidated by Sampas's clout and indentured to his cash -- thus their decision to blackball Nicosia.
Nonsense, says UMass Lowell professor Hilary Holladay, who organized the festival's showcase "Beat Attitudes" conference and rejected a bid by Nicosia to take part. His proposal "didn't fit with the theme of the conference," she says. "He attached some vitriol that wasn't in the spirit of the event. It would have been foolish of me to invite someone who wasn't behaving professionally as a scholar."
Holladay allows that Nicosia is "unpopular among organizers of the festival," but she dismisses as paranoia his claims of a Sampas-led blacklisting. "He's persona non grata among Kerouac scholars," she says. "He's caused a lot of bad feelings in the city."
Nicosia chalks this attitude up to Sampas's alleged campaign to discredit him. "You'll hear that I'm a mad dog with foam coming out of my mouth," he says. "I'm tired of it. I'm a respected scholar." Accordingly, Nicosia is planning a few events of his own to coincide with the official celebration, including a protest by "nationally prominent writers."
Nicosia also plans to attend the Beat Attitudes conference. "I will be there if they let me in," he says. In 1995, Nicosia was thrown out of a similar event at New York University for arguing loudly with Allen Ginsberg. Does he plan a repeat performance? "I want to make some statements," he says. "If they allow a Q&A, I plan on asking some questions."
While Sampas and Nicosia duke it out, one wonders what Jack Kerouac would have made of this mess. As Nicosia puts it, "It's totally antithetical to what Kerouac stood for: compassion, tolerance, brotherhood."
My choice for where the files will be planted? Karl Rove.
Yes--I think the Kerouac scandal described in my other post confirms that money is what motivates him. Also, after reading the part there which says, "He's persona non grata among Kerouac scholars", it occurred to me that he's been misrepresenting his academic credentials. His website says he has degrees in Literature:
Gerald Nicosia received a B.A. (1971) and an M.A. (1973) in English and American Literature. . .Nicosia has been a freelance journalist, interviewer, and literary critic for the past twenty years. . .Nicosia has taught creative writing and journalism at the University of Illinois and the University of California, Los Angeles. ..Nicosia is also well-known for his own poetry and fiction, much of which has been published in literary magazines.
But here is how he is described in every article I've seen on his "theft" claims:
Historian: Kerry FBI files stolen
FBI documents about FBI surveillance of John Kerry in the early 1970s have been stolen, according to their owner, a historian who lives near San Francisco, California.
Now I happen to have one of my degrees in History, and I can tell you I didn't get it by taking Literature classes, teaching creative writing, or writing books on Jack Kerouac. Furthermore, as the above indicates, Nicosia is not even considered a reputable scholar by his colleagues in his own field. Nicosia is an academic fraud.
Powerful.
Sorry to say, this is too complex for the police.
He's filed a false report for a very specific purpose.
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